A Prospect Newsletter About Big Ideas
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**From the Exonerated Five to the New York City Council**
**Yusef Salaam campaigned on economic justice and housing reform.**Â
Yusef Salaam, one of the "Central Park Five" who was exonerated of
criminal charges more than 20 years ago, has been projected to win a New
York City Council primary race. Salaam has declared victory, and though
the primary will not be certified until next week and there's still a
general election to contend with, barring any major upheavals, Salaam
will take the council seat in Harlem.
Salaam's story with the Exonerated Five (a less presumptuous way to
describe the group, coined by Oprah Winfrey
<[link removed]>)
is a well-documented misappropriation of justice. In 1989, five young
Black men were accused of sexually assaulting a jogger in New York
City's Central Park. The young men were harangued into bogus
confessions, and subsequently sentenced to prison.
Years later, the real perpetrator confessed, and their convictions were
overturned. New York City paid out over $40 million for the emotional
distress and discrimination. The Five were also the subject of a
four-part Netflix production called When They See Us
<[link removed]>, in addition to a Ken Burns
documentary for PBS <[link removed]>
in 2012. Today, three of the men are criminal justice reform advocates.
Salaam is the only one so far to seek elected office.
Salaam defeated two sitting members of the state assembly, including
one, Inez Dickens, who held that city council seat previously for 12
years. He declared victory with just over 50 percent of the vote,
compared to Dickens's 25 percent. Because the landscape could change
within the week of vote-counting left (up until July 5th), no winner has
been officially declared. But with New York's use of the ranked-choice
voting <[link removed]> system,
a voting reform the progressive movement has been touting for years,
"even if Salaam finishes just under 50 percent, he'd still easily be
the best-positioned candidate to win once votes start getting
redistributed," CNN explained
<[link removed]>.
There are no Republican contenders
<[link removed]>.
According to The New York Times
<[link removed]>,
Salaam's win signals a shift to "moderate" candidates among the Black
voting population in New York. It's true that the incumbent, Kristin
Richardson Jordan, labeled herself a democratic socialist. (She dropped
out of the race in May, though she still appeared on the ballot.) Salaam
did not seek Jordan's endorsement and took positions to her right on
certain issues. Black candidates, and the Black voting bloc as a whole,
are complex. But while Salaam may not call himself a socialist, his
campaign was built off of the need for economic, housing, and
environmental justice in NYC's Ninth Council District.
[link removed]
For example, Salaam calls for the need to "rightsize" the police.
Indeed, a more radical view would be to abolish law enforcement
completely. But, realistically, candidates have not successfully won a
"defund the police" campaign. It is especially difficult in a social
climate that is incredibly worried
<[link removed]>
about the potential for rising violent crime.
"Across the world, the safest communities are not those that are the
most policed, but rather are those with the best resources-those that
meet their residents where they are, and strengthen trust between
community and government," Salaam's campaign wrote on criminal
justice. Funding communities instead of the police is, believe it or
not, extremely controversial. This is perhaps seen best in the Cop City
debacle, which I previously wrote about
<[link removed]>
for Based.
There's also the point that the two candidates Salaam was actually
running against, rather than the incumbent who dropped out, were
longtime elected officials from the political establishment, not part of
the newer wave of fresh, socialist-leaning voices in New York politics.
Dickens is a landlord who evicted at least 17 people
<[link removed]>
in recent years, and who had the support of moderate Mayor Eric Adams.
In his endorsement, Adams said of Dickens, "It's all right to have a
city that's friendly to businesses." As
**New York** reported
<[link removed]>,
this was the only city council race the mayor weighed in on.
Assemblyman Al Taylor and Salaam cross-endorsed one another, encouraging
voters to rank each of them 1-2, in a bid to lower Dickens's vote
share in the ranked-choice contest. Progressives like Minnesota attorney
general Keith Ellison, and even radicals like newbie presidential
candidate Cornel West, endorsed Salaam.
The bottom line is this: Getting caught up in party labels neglects the
fact that Salaam is advocating for progressive change.
Salaam's win also exemplifies why the criminal justice system must be
held accountable, even to those it seeks to punish. The Innocence
Project <[link removed]>, a nonprofit
dedicated to criminal justice reform that Salaam sits on the board of,
has helped free or exonerate over 200 individuals. Still, without the
major push to clear the Five's names, their fate would have remained
as those of thousands who sit in the criminal justice systems illegally
detained, falsely accused, or without a fair and speedy trial.
And the sweetest bit of irony: Perhaps one of Donald Trump's most
egregious acts of racism was the full-page ad he took out in 1989
seemingly calling for the Central Park Five to receive the death penalty
<[link removed]>.
Now, while the former president fights various legal battles, some with
criminal charges, and rages about his loss against President Biden,
Salaam has the means to push for reform.
~ RAMENDA CYRUS, JOHN LEWIS WRITING FELLOW
Follow Ramenda Cyrus on Twitter <[link removed]>
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